California’s fires force evacuation of people and exotic animals

California is burning, again. Flames raced down a steep hillside “like a freight train” leaving smouldering remains of homes and forcing thousands to flee the wildfire churning through the state’s tinder-dry canyons.

The fire that has destroyed at least 18 houses in northern Los Angeles County gained ferocious new power two days after it broke out, sending so much smoke in the air that planes making drops on it had to be grounded for part of the afternoon.

“For this time of year, it’s the most extreme fire behaviour I’ve seen in my 32-year career,” county fire chief Daryl Osby said.

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About 480 kilometres up the coast, crews were fighting another fire spanning more than 41 square kilometres and forcing evacuations outside the scenic Big Sur region.

The Southern California blaze has blackened more than 88 square kilometres of brush near the city of Santa Clarita, and the authorities found a burned body in a car.

Evacuations

Residents of thousands of homes were evacuated, and a 64-kilometre stretch of State Route 14 was closed except for those leaving.

Shifting winds were pushing flames north-east through Angeles National Forest, where additional evacuations were ordered in the city of Acton and other residents were warned to prepare to leave.

Planes were unable to make drops over the fire for a long stretch of the afternoon, but helicopters were releasing retardant around the perimeter.

“The fire’s just doing what it wants right now,” US Forest Service spokesman Nathan Judy said. “We have to stick back, let it do what it wants to and attack it where we can.”

“It started consuming houses that were non-defendable,” Los Angeles County deputy fire chief John Tripp said, describing the flames as charging through terrain “like a freight train”.

More than 1,600 firefighters were tackling the flames that sent up a huge plume of smoke visible across the region.

More to come

The fire destroyed film sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations.

It also forced a sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion.

The fire has ripped through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures and years of drought.